Welfare

Posted by Robyn on Nov 19, 2008 in Politics |

With all the talk of corporate bail-outs, I just have a few things to say about this issue.

Obviously, we shouldn’t let giant companies who employ millions of people go out of business. This would just raise unemployment, and push us even deeper into a recession. And of course, there have to be conditions attached to the assistance given to those companies by taxpayers. When executives show up on private jets to ask for a bailout, I agree that sends the wrong message. Here’s my take.

1. If you take money from the government, you shouldn’t be allowed to lay off more than 5% of your workforce over the next five years. You can re-organize, consolidate, re-assign labor, or whatever you have to do to stay afloat. But if the whole point of the bailout is to save jobs, you don’t get to take the money, then cut the jobs anyway.

2. No employee earns a salary more than twenty times what the lowest-paid employee earns. That doesn’t prohibit performance-pay contractual bonuses and so forth, but I don’t see why any executive could “deserve” more than TWENTY TIMES what their workers make without proving their worth.

3. Quitcherbitchin about taxes. Seriously. The next time I hear some corporate fat-cat pundit on Fox News blathering about socialism and welfare moms, I’m going to freak. The amount of money taxpayers are spending on corporate bailouts is so much more than we’ve ever spent on social programs for the poor. Just STFU already.

4. What about the middle class? We just sit here, working away, paying taxes, and driving the economy. Meanwhile, all the handouts go to the rich or the poor. Meanwhile, we walk a tightrope. If someone gets sick or laid off, there’s no help for us. They’ve even made bankruptcy nearly impossible. Where is our safety net?

Okay, that’s it for my rant. It just seems like the people who work the hardest, take the most risk, and pay the highest percentage of their income in taxes are forced to make it on their own, while they watch others reap the benefits.

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